The Lost Boys

This is all over the place. Is it a horror film? A comedy? Teen romance? Homoerotica? A family adventure? It has elements of all these, and a startling lack of consistency in tone, yet some of the individual parts work very well. Two brothers (Haim & Patric) move to Santa Carla with their mother. The older falls in with the local bike-gang, who are vampires when, it would appear, not doing more important things such as getting 1980's hair-dos or fixing each other's make-up. So it doesn't get too overtly gay, there's Star (Gertz), a proto-vampire who'd really rather not be. The older brother falls in love with her, but his reflection is also vanishing, so it's up to his sibling - complete with Reform School Girls poster on his bedroom wall - to save the day.

The Peter Pan elements are largely undeveloped, and Haim and Patric are never convincing as brothers. Luckily, the supporting cast is great: their animal-stuffing grandpa (Bernard Hughes) comes close to stealing the show, thanks to his use of window-cleaner as aftershave. However, comic-book geeks Edgar and Alan Frog do, thanks to their laconic approach to the situation, and interesting techniques for finding the head honcho (let's just say the usual rules don't seem to apply...). This kind of thing, and classic lines like, "My own brother a goddamn, shit-sucking vampire! Oh, you wait 'til Mom finds out, buddy", ensure that despite inevitably being dated, this one resists the passage of time almost as well as its vampiric characters would.